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Big Woody beer festival brings barrel-aged brews to Portland

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The Big Woody Barrel Aged Beer and Whiskey Festival is bringing together barrel-aged brews from around the region in a judged tasting, along with a few whiskeys for good measure.
(John M. Vincent/The Oregonian)

"Portland is clearly the beer capital of the U.S., so we
need to have the premier wood-aged beer festival in the U.S." said Lee Perry,
director of Big Woody. He said the Portland event is an offshoot of Little
Woody, an annual non-judged tasting event in Bend at the end of the summer.

For the new event, organizers are bringing in 18
breweries from Oregon, Washington and Northern California. There will be
porters, stouts and sours, but Perry said the beer all falls under the
"experimental" category. Because barrel aging beer takes months to make, every
batch is naturally something of an experiment.

"Regular beer you can put in a keg and it's pretty much
ready to go. With barrel aging you're really fine tuning the taste of that
beer," Perry said. The flavors usually end up more subtle and refined, not
unlike that of good whiskey. But greater rewards often require greater risks,
so making barrel-aged beer something of a crapshoot. "It takes a good six to nine
months to get a really good barrel-aged beer," he said. "You can't just throw a
beer in a barrel and expect it be something spectacular in a month."

The judges will decide which local brewers have the chops
and which do not this weekend. You can judge for yourself, of course, as all 18
breweries, as well as a handful of whiskeys, will be on tap for tasting all
weekend.

Big Woody is taking place this Friday and Saturday, Jan. 17 and 18, from 4 p.m. to 11 p.m. at the Leftbank Annex. Tickets
are $40 for a single day of tasting, which gets you a solid 20 drink
tokens. Extra tokens are $1 apiece. Designated drivers get in for $20 and get
free non-alcoholic drinks all night, but if you don't have a DD, consider grabbing the streetcar, only about
a block away.